Oluwatobiloba Amusan might have sounded notice of her potential last year, but she is gradually taking it a notch higher after helping University of Texas El-Paso’s Athletics team, the Miners to the women’s title at the 2016 Conference USA Indoor Track & Field Championships.
Stunning the field to win GOLD at the 2015 African Games, Amusan relocated abroad early this year and has since gotten better, competing in her first indoor outing this season. Amusan ran a Personal Best (PB) of 8.23m in the 60m hurdles to win GOLD, lowering her first PB of 8.30s in the heats as she made the final. Brittney Trought was 2nd in 8.37s, and Jessica Gelibert 3rd in 8.44s.
Amusan wasn’t the only Nigerian athlete in fine form for UTEP. Ada Benjamin broke her own C-USA Meet Record (MR) of 53.95s, running the fastest time in the preliminaries to win her 400m heat in 53.93s.
Benjamin went on to win Silver for UTEP with a faster time of 53.73s, as Mariam Kromah won the race in 53.51s. Jessica Gelibert was 3rd in 54.24s.
Florence Uwakwe might have finished 5th in the 60m with a time of 7.53s, but she did even better in the 200m dash, running the second fastest time in the preliminaries, clocking 24.08s. In the final, Uwakwe finished 2nd in 23.84s with Carrol Hardy taking GOLD in 23.63s, and Khadijah Valentine 3rd in 24.05
Meanwhile in the 800m, Nigeria’s Abike Egbeniyi won Bronze for Middle Tennessee, running 2:11.62. Susan Aneno won GOLD in 2:11.02 10, as Ghana’s Agnes Abu finished 2nd in 2:11.42.
Photo Credit: @UTEPTrack
